The Screenrights Cultural Fund makes a difference by supporting people with exciting and innovative new initiatives that foster the creation and appreciation of screen content in Australia and New Zealand. Read about our previously funded projects below.
- Grants of up to $50,000 per initiative
- culturalfund@screenrights.org
Focus 2021: NEW TEAMS
Funded Projects
Sweetshop & Green
Activity: ‘The New Pasifika Creators Accelerator Program’ is New Zealand’s first program designed to place talented emerging Pacific creatives living in New Zealand with high-profile, established Pacific-led production companies to provide on-the-ground training, mentorship, networking and skills development. The program has been designed by Team Moana, a new Pacific-led collective of four high-profile production companies. The goal of the collective is to create a pipeline of new Pacific talent by providing sought after opportunities that will help provide essential credits necessary to gain entrance into the industry. The program has been devised as an annual program for four highly talented emerging Pacific creatives.
Location: New Zealand
Amount funded: $50,000
Diversity Arts Australia
Activity: ‘Equity, Inclusion and the Screen Sector’ is a capacity building program to increase understanding and confidence of the small to medium screen based companies around engaging effectively with cultural and racial diversity – including the persistence of systemic barriers in practices and building culturally safe practices. The program is focused on practical and actionable strategies to make change, from recruitment and leadership to programming and audience development. The focus of the program is on building capacities to work with culturally and linguistically diverse, migrant, POC and refugee communities who are underrepresented in the screen industry, and build knowledge and connections with these communities.
Location: Australia
Amount funded: $25,000
Back to Back Theatre
Activity: Back to Back Theatre will partner with screen industry leaders to share the outcomes of their internship program that saw people with disability employed and mentored in production roles during the creation of Shadow in 2020, with a view to creating a model(s) for increased employment opportunities for people with disability in the wider screen sector. With Deakin University, Back to Back conducted comprehensive research and evaluation of the internship program, documenting actual and potential long-term economic benefits and social impacts for individuals with a disability, their capacity to be engaged with mainstream screen services and within the broader community. This project will see Back to Back’s research form innovative partnerships with sectors of the screen industry, developing concrete strategies to assist these partners to explore strength-based opportunities and approaches to disability employment.
Location: Australia (NSW)
Amount funded: $20,000
Co-Curious
Activity: ‘Stories From Another Australia’ is a talent and career development program that aims to address issues around the lack of cultural diversity in the screen industry through a tailored skills development program designed to bring together emerging CaLD screenwriters and experienced industry practitioners. The program will create a network of support and potential collaborators. It will also provide participants with the tools to unlock four key enablers essential in establishing and sustaining a screenwriting career.
Location: Australia (NSW & VIC)
Amount funded: $45,500
Midnight Feast
Activity: ‘The Feast’ is an innovative training program teaming 20 artists with physical and intellectual disabilities with creatives from Jungle Entertainment and The Corinthian Food Store to learn about collaborative writing, development, pitching, pathways to audience, casting, directing and editing on a budget. Over one year, artists from Midnight Feast will be encouraged to work with new collaborators, to develop skills, and to deepen their connections in the film industry. At the culmination of the program, each artist will have a chance to pitch a project to executives from Jungle Entertainment and The Corinthian Food Store, and to receive feedback. A documentary crew will capture the work of the artists from start to finish. This program is about giving artists agency over their own work, as well as a place at the table with well-connected partners.
Location: Australia (NSW & VIC)
Amount funded: $49,100
Media Farm
Activity: ‘Impact Teams Lab’ is a new initiative that brings together participants from three different groups or categories – producers and storytellers, researchers and subject matter experts, and people with lived experience – to form new teams to tackle two important problems we face: Climate crisis and Inequality, Diversity and Inclusion. Impact Teams Lab introduces these participants to one another and helps them form transdisciplinary teams over mutual areas of concern. Then, over a 6-week period, the teams are guided on how to work together to develop a screen content project that will make a measurable impact. At the end of this period, lab participants will pitch their projects and impact measurement tools to networks, screen agencies and to impact investors for feedback and development funding.
Location: Australia (NSW)
Amount funded: $30,000
For Film’s Sake
Activity: Platform 2022 is a three-day workshop intensive that follows this year’s first ever Platform, to be staged with Sydney Film Festival to provide expert skill development that bridges the gap between creative and commercial elements of screen production in the global market. The workshop will support up to 10 participants with an active screen project in development, and culminate in a public pitch to international mentors and financiers.
Location: Australia (NSW)
Amount funded: $30,000
Focus 2020: New Voices
Funded Projects
Bus Stop Films
Activity: The expansion of Bus Stop Films’ (BSF) award-winning Accessible Film Studies Program to Queensland, Victoria and South Australia. It will see access to film school education, filmmaking opportunities and screen industry employment pathways open for up to 45 young adults living with disabilities in Brisbane, Melbourne and Adelaide. Additionally, the delivery of the Program will see creation of at least nine new jobs by employing emerging filmmakers from diverse backgrounds to deliver the Program, and who’ll also gain above the line credits in BSF’s productions, furthering the Organisation’s contribution to diversity in the screen industry ecosystem.
Location: Australia (QLD, VIC, SA)
Amount funded: $45,000
Juluwarlu Group Aboriginal Corporation
Activity: Our Ganalili Heroes is a youth digital media project that will give 12 young people digital media skills and the confidence and courage that comes from recognising their commitment to contribute their voices to sustaining the deep cultural and community-held knowledge of Yindjibarndi – and opportunities to reflect, imagine and make and share their own creatively expressive important stories and meanings with wider Australian audiences. This is an important chance to step-up young people to grab hold of their own futures.
Location: Australia (WA)
Amount funded: $38,720
Cinespace Inc
Activity: An online educational program that gives culturally diverse creatives the tools to be able to access industry, developing knowledge and skills in a phase of production known as ‘packaging’, and a greater understanding of how our industry needs to view projects. The capacity and skills building program will build diverse creatives’ capacity and lead to greater representation on Australian screens.
Location: Australia, online (VIC-based)
Amount funded: $31,280
Tai Huri Films Limited
Activity: KŌRERO TUKU IHO is a story development and screen production residency for rangatahi Māori from Aotearoa New Zealand’s Far North region. Participants connect with kaumātua (elders) and experts in local history during a series of marae-based wānanga (seminars) where they explore their cultural narratives while establishing, maintaining and strengthening their sense of belonging. Upon completion of the wānanga participants submit a story idea for consideration to advance to a week-long residency programme at Waitangi Treaty Grounds. Based on factors such as story idea, leadership, commitment, focus and enthusiasm five new filmmaking talents will be selected by an industry panel to advance their projects to the residency programme. Under the guidance of screen industry mentors participants will develop their short films, reimagining local history, to produce a script. Each talent will be funded to produce and deliver a final film. The fundamental outcome of these workshops are to foster new filmmaking talents and inspire the next generation of Māori storytellers to pursue a career in film and media arts.
Location: New Zealand (Northland)
Amount funded: $45,000
Screenworks
Activity: A program to train undiscovered, diverse and talented screenwriters living in regional Australia with specific skills that meet industry requirements. Screenworks will collaborate with Hoodlum Entertainment and Princess Pictures to identify the genres and formats that they need writers for. Screenworks will put a call out to discover new, diverse and talented screenwriters from regional Australia and will implement a unique training program to upskill 50 new regional writers in order to write to a production company’s brief. The participants’ work will be assessed by the production companies who will select previously undiscovered regional writers to join them as writing interns.
Location: Australia (NSW)
Amount funded: $45,000
Southland Creative Inc
Activity: My Home My Culture – South Coast NSW Short Film Project is a short filmmaking mentorship program that will see ten aspiring young local filmmakers aged 16-24 years complete a program designed specifically to allow them to share their own cultural short film that shares insights and gives them a voice to share their story with audiences and communities following the recent droughts, devastating bushfires, floods and now coronavirus pandemic. The program is designed specifically for these regional young aspiring filmmakers who are feeling isolated and unable to access the same storytelling opportunities as those in big cities.
Location: Australia (NSW)
Amount funded: $45,000
Script to Screen Te Tari Tuhi Kupu A Whakaahua
Activity: Paerangi is a 3-stage programme that finds new voices in remote regions and isolated situations to give inexperienced aspiring filmmakers the tools to develop a captivating story for screen. The most distinctive projects progress to the next stage: Stage 1 is a series of online learning for self-directed completion, teaching how to find and structure an engaging story for short film and web series formats; Stage 2 provides a mentor to hone their vision and refine project documents; Stage 3 is a 3-day intensive residential lab to develop the project further. Teams leave Stage 3 with a short film or web series project ready for funding and production, and new connections.
Location: New Zealand (Auckland)
Amount funded: $45,000
2019 Focus: Education and Screen Content
Funded Projects
Light Sound Art Film
Activity: to support The Staging Post Education Project, a schools workshop program, website, and social media program that builds on 2017’s The Staging Post documentary to facilitate understanding and dialogue between Australian students and refugees living in transit in Indonesia.
Location: Australia
Amount funded: $50,000
Documentary Australia Foundation
Activity: for DocAccess, an online, interactive portal that will provide educational resources to filmmakers, communities and individuals to create social impact and change.
Location: Australia
Amount funded: $50,000
Maoriland Charitable Trust
Activity: to support Through Our Lens, an indigenous youth peer-to-peer workshop initiative supporting collaboration and strong networks for youth Māori filmmakers and fostering future leaders and diverse screen voices.
Location: New Zealand
Amount funded: $50,000
Film Outreach Australia
Activity: to deliver strategies and tools to regional venues and presenters that will help them to develop new screen audiences for a diverse range of screening programs and film festivals.
Location: Australia
Amount funded: $25,000
2018 Focus: Education and use of meaningful screen content
Funded Projects
Psykinetic
Activity: to support a new screen content delivery platform controlled by eyes, muscle and the mind. Created by Dr Jordan Nguyen of Psykinetic, which specialises in cutting-edge assistive technology to improve independence and quality of life for people with disability.
Location: Australia
Amount funded: $50,000
Sharing Stories Foundation
Activity: to increase access for culturally significant Indigenous material in schools through an innovative app. The Sharing Stories Foundation has developed culturally significant media with the Three Traditional Tribal Groups Advisory Council in Lake Mungo, and with this grant, will develop an interactive app and education package that guides users across landscapes and knowledge.
Location: Australia
Amount funded: $50,000
Brad Knewstubb
Activity: for TOGETHER, a collaborative live experience platform set inside a geodesic dome to tour schools across New Zealand with interactive film-based educational content. Employing 360 degree projection, interactive video, augmented reality headsets and a fully immersive environment, Brad Knewstubb’s pop-up touring model for TOGETHER aims to overcome barriers that remote communities face in accessing contemporary technologies and education content.
Location: New Zealand
Amount funded: $50,000
The Screenrights Cultural Fund is not a development or production fund. For development or production funding opportunities, we suggest checking out your regional screen or arts funding bodies.